Ethics vs. Convenience: Beauty Bodega Reveals All

At The XD Agency, our team of creative thinkers is always, well, thinking creatively. We’re leveraging best-in-class experience design to help brands every day — and when we can help brands do good while doing well, that’s all the better. Recently, our own team’s values-driven mindset, combined with our passion for the beauty industry, inspired a concept store.

Lush opens “convenience store” that answers the age-old question: Do consumers care about what goes into the products they buy?

When was the last time you picked out a product and actually took the time to review the list of ingredients and the product’s origin? Have you considered whether you might be buying products that were made without any thought to child labor laws?

Now’s a good time start. And Lush’s Beauty Bodega Convenience Store is here to help. At this pop-up brand activation, everything is free — but there’s a catch.

In a fast-paced experience that nods to the ’90s show Supermarket Sweep, Lush will offer consumers three competing brands of Cocoa Butter Lotion. But all the branding will be masked. The labels will only indicate the products’ ingredients and how they were sourced. As consumers “check out” of the experience, they’ll be hit with the implications of their choices.

They’ll learn whether they made the ethical choice or just grabbed some lotion without thought. Will it change the way they purchase products in the future?

An ethically driven beauty brand, Lush is known for its no-frills, transparent trading and ethically minded acquisition of ingredients for its products. What you see is most definitely what you get. To put this into industry perspective, many of the most popular cosmetics companies do not directly set up trade agreements in the countries from which they source their ingredients, nor do they take the initiative to educate themselves the environments and labor practices there. According to one report from the International Labour Organization, (2004) “In the Ivory Coast alone, nearly 12,000 of the child labourers had no relatives in the area, suggesting they were trafficked as slaves.” The question remains, are keeping costs low really worth it?

Consumers will soon show us — and themselves — whether they’re willing to take the time to read the back of product labels. In their sprints through the Lush Beauty Bodega Convenience Store, will they pick a product created within the confines of the law or default a rapid grab-and-go, even if the result is buying products made by enslaved children?

Ok, this concept store isn’t real. But the idea is! Interested in bringing it to life for your brand? Hit us up at hello@xdagency.com.